CLIMATE AND PRODUCTIONS.
“Ager totius Asiae fertilissimus.”--PLIN. H. N. vi. 26.
Lower Mesopotamia, or Chaldaea, which lies in the same latitude with
Central China, the Punjab, Palestine, Marocco, Georgia, Texas, and
Central California, has a climate the warmth of which is at least equal
to that of any of those regions. Even in the more northern part of the
country, the district about Baghdad, the thermometer often rises during
the summer to 120 deg. of Fahrenheit in the shade; and the inhabitants
are forced to retreat to their _serdabs_ or cellars, where they remain
during the day, in an atmosphere which, by the entire exclusion of the
sun’s rays, is reduced to about 100 deg. Lower down the valley, at
Zobair, Busrah, and Mohammrah, the summer temperature is still higher;
and, owing to the moisture of the atmosphere, consequent on the vicinity
of the sea, the heat is of that peculiarly oppressive character which
prevails on the sea-coast of Hindustan, in Ceylon, in the West Indian
Islands, at New Orleans, and in other places whose situation is similar.
The vital powers languish under this oppression, which produces in the
European a lassitude of body and a prostration of mind that wholly unfit
him for active duties. On the Asiatic, however, these influences seem to
have little effect. The Cha’b Arabs, who at present inhabit the region,
are a tall and warlike race, strong-limbed, and muscular; they appear to
enjoy the climate, and are as active, as healthy, and as long-lived as
any tribe of their nation. But if man by long residence becomes
thoroughly inured to the intense heat of these regions, it is otherwise
with the animal creation. Camels sicken, and birds are so distressed by
the high temperature that they sit in the date-trees about Baghdad, with
their mouths open, panting for fresh air.
The evils proceeding from a burning temperature are augmented in places
under the influence of winds, which, arising suddenly, fill the air with
an impalpable sand, sometimes circling about a point, sometimes driving
with furious force across a wide extent of country. The heated
particles, by their contact with the atmosphere, increase its fervid
glow, and, penetrating by the nose and mouth, dry up the moisture of the
tongue, parch the throat, and irritate or even choke the lungs. Earth
and sky are alike concealed by the dusty storm, through which no object
can be distinguished that is removed many yards; a lurid gleam surrounds
the traveller, and seems to accompany him as he moves: every landmark is
hid from view; and to the danger of suffocation is added that of becoming
bewildered and losing all knowledge of the road. Such are the perils
encountered in the present condition of the country. It may be doubted,
however, if in the times with which we are here concerned the evils just
described had an existence. The sands of Chaldaea, which are still
progressive and advancing, seem to have reached it from the Arabian
Desert, to which they properly belong: year by year the drifts gain upon
the alluvium, and threaten to spread over the whole country. If we may
calculate the earlier by the present rate of progress, we must conclude
that anciently these shifting sands had at any rate not crossed the
Euphrates.
If the heat of summer be thus fierce and trying, the cold of winter must
be pronounced to be very moderate. Frost, indeed, is not unknown in the
country: but the frosts are only slight. Keen winds blow from the north,
and in the morning the ground is often whitened by the congelation of the
dew; the Arabs, impatient of a low temperature, droop and flag; but there
is at no time any severity of cold; ice rarely forms in the marshes; snow
is unknown; and the thermometer, even on the grass, does not often sink
below 30 deg. The Persian kings passed their winter in Babylon, on
account of the mildness of the climate; and Indian princes, expelled from
the Peninsula, are wont, from a similar cause, to fix their residence at
Busrah or Baghdad. The cold of which travellers speak is relative rather
than positive. The range of the thermometer in Lower Chaldoea is perhaps
100 deg., whereas in England it is scarcely 80 deg., there is thus a
greater difference between the heat of summer and the cold of winter
there than here; but the actual greatest cold--that which benumbs the
Arabs and makes them fall from their horses--is no more than we often
experience in April, or even in May.
The rainy season of Chaldaea is in the winter time. Heavy showers fall
in November, and still more in December, which sensibly raise the level
of the rivers. As the spring advances the showers become lighter and
less frequent; but still they recur from time to time, until the summer
sets in, about May. From May to November rain is very rare indeed. The
sky continues for weeks or even months without a cloud; and the sun’s
rays are only tempered for a short time at morning and at evening by a
gray mist or haze. It is during these months that the phenomenon of the
mirage is most remarkable. The strata of air, unequally heated, and
therefore differing in rarity, refract the rays of light, fantastically
enlarging and distorting the objects seen through them, which frequently
appear raised from the ground and hanging in mid-air, or else, by a
repetition of their image, which is reflected in a lower stratum, give
the impression that they stand up out of a lake. Hence the delusion
which has so often driven the traveller to desperation--the “image of a
cool, rippling, watery mirror,” which flies before him as he advances,
and at once provokes and mocks his thirst.
The fertility of Chaldaea in ancient times was proverbial.
“Of all countries that we know,” says Herodotus, “there is none that is
so fruitful in grain. It makes no pretension, indeed, of growing the
fig, the olive, the vine, or any other tree of the kind; but in grain it
is so fruitful as to yield commonly two hundred-fold, and when the
production is at the greatest, even three hundred-fold. The blade of the
wheat-plant and of the barley-plant is often four fingers in breadth. As
for the millet and the sesame, I shall not say to what height they grow,
though within my own knowledge; for I am not ignorant that what I have
already written concerning the fruitfulness of Babylonia must seem
incredible to those who have not visited the country.” Theophrastus, the
disciple of Aristotle, remarks--“In Babylon the wheat-fields are
regularly mown twice, and then fed off with beasts, to keep down the
luxuriance of the leaf; otherwise the plant does not run to ear. When
this is done, the return, in lands that are badly cultivated, is
fifty-fold; while, in those that are well farmed, it is a hundred-fold.”
Strabo observes--“The country produces barley on a scale not known
elsewhere, for the return is said to be three hundred-fold. All other
wants are supplied by the palm, which furnishes not only bread, but wine,
vinegar, honey, and meal.” Pliny follows Theophrastus, with the
exception that he makes the return of the wheat-crop, where the land is
well farmed, a hundred and fifty-fold. The wealth of the region was
strikingly exhibited by the heavy demands which were made upon it by the
Persian kings, as well as by the riches which, notwithstanding these
demands, were accumulated in the hands of those who administered its
government. The money-tribute paid by Babylonia and Assyria to the
Persians was a thousand talents of silver (nearly a quarter of a million
of our money) annually; while the tribute in kind was reckoned at one
third part of the contributions of the whole empire. Yet, despite this
drain on its resources, the government was regarded as the best that the
Persian king had to bestow, and the wealth accumulated by Babylonian
satraps was extraordinary. Herodotus tells us of a certain
Tritanteechmes, a governor, who, to his own knowledge, derived from his
province nearly two bushels of silver daily! This fortunate individual
had a “stud of sixteen thousand mares, with a proportionate number of
horses.” Another evidence of the fertility of the region may be traced
in the fear of Artaxerxes Mnemon, after the battle of Cunaxa, lest the
Ten Thousand should determine to settle permanently in the vicinity of
Sittace upon the Tigris. Whatever opinion may be held as to the exact
position of this place, and of the district intended by Xenophon, it is
certain that it was in the alluvial plain and so contained within the
limits of the ancient Chaldaea.
Modern travellers, speaking of Chaldaea in its present condition, express
themselves less enthusiastically than the ancients; but, on the whole,
agree with them as to the natural capabilities of the country. “The
soil,” says one of the most judicious, “is extremely fertile, producing
great quantities of rice, dates, and grain of different kinds, though it
is not cultivated to above half the degree of which it is susceptible.”
“The soil is rich,” says another, “not less bountiful than that on the
banks of the Egyptian Nile.” “Although greatly changed by the neglect of
man,” observes a third, “those portions of Mesopotamia which are still
cultivated, as the country about Hillah, show that the region has all the
fertility ascribed to it by Herodotus.” There is a general recognition
of the productive qualities of the district, combined with a general
lamentation over the existing neglect and apathy which allow such gifts
of Nature to run to waste. Cultivation, we are told, is now the
exception, instead of the rule. “Instead of the luxuriant fields, the
groves and gardens of former times, nothing now meets the eye but an arid
waste.” Many parts of Chaldaea, naturally as productive as any others,
are at present pictures of desolation. Large tracts are covered by
unwholesome marshes, producing nothing but enormous reeds; others lie
waste and bare, parched up by the fierce heat of the sun, and utterly
destitute of water; in some places, as has been already mentioned,
sand-drifts accumulate, and threaten to make the whole region a mere
portion of the desert.
The great cause of this difference between ancient and modern Chaldaea is
the neglect of the water-courses. Left to themselves, the rivers tend to
desert some portions of the alluvium wholly, which then become utterly
unproductive; while they spread themselves out over others, which are
converted thereby into pestilential swamps. A well-arranged system of
embankments and irrigating canals is necessary in order to develop the
natural capabilities of the country, and to derive from the rich soil of
this vast alluvium the valuable and varied products which it can be made
to furnish.
Among the natural products of the region two stand out as pre-eminently
important-the wheat-plant and the date-palm. [PLATE IV., Fig. 2.]
According to the native tradition, wheat was indigenous in Chaldaea; and
the first comers thus found themselves provided by the bountiful hand of
Nature with the chief necessary of life. The luxuriance of the plant was
excessive. Its leaves were as broad as the palm of a man’s hand, and its
tendency to grow leaves was so great that (as we have seen) the
Babylonians used to mow it twice and then pasture their cattle on it for
awhile, to keep down the blade and induce the plant to run to ear. The
ultimate return was enormous; on the most moderate computation it
amounted to fifty-fold at the least, and often to a hundred-fold. The
modern oriental is content, even in the case of a rich soil, with a
tenfold return.
The date-palm was at once one of the most valuable and one of the most
ornamental products of the country. “Of all vegetable forms,” says the
greatest of modern naturalists, “the palm is that to which the prize of
beauty has been assigned by the concurrent voice of nations in all ages.”
And though the date-palm is in form perhaps less graceful and lovely than
some of its sister species, it possesses in the dates themselves a beauty
which they lack. These charming yellow clusters, semi-transparent, which
the Greeks likened to amber, and moderns compare to gold, contrast, both
in shade and tint, with the green feathery branches beneath whose shade
they hang, and give a richness to the landscape they adorn which adds
greatly to its attractions. And the utility of the palm has been at all
times proverbial. A Persian poem celebrated its three hundred and sixty
uses. The Greeks, with more moderation, spoke of it as furnishing the
Babylonians with bread, wine, vinegar, honey, groats, string and ropes of
all kinds, firing, and a mash for fattening cattle. The fruit was
excellent, and has formed at all times an important article of
nourishment in the country. It was eaten both fresh and dried, forming
in the latter case a delicious sweetmeat. The wine, “sweet but
headachy,” was probably not the spirit which it is at present customary
to distil from the dates, but the slightly intoxicating drink called
_lagby_ in North Africa, which may be drawn from the tree itself by
decapitating it, and suffering the juice to flow. The vinegar was
perhaps the same fluid corrupted, or it may have been obtained from the
dates. The honey was palm-sugar, likewise procurable from the sap. How
the groats were obtained we do not know; but it appears that the pith of
the palm was eaten formerly in Babylonia, and was thought to have a very
agreeable flavor. Ropes were made from the fibres of the bark; and the
wood was employed for building and furniture. It was soft, light and
easily worked; but tough, strong and fibrous.
The cultivation of the date-palm was widely extended in Chaldaea,
probably from very early times. The combination of sand, moisture,
and a moderately saline soil, in which it delights, was there found in
perfection, more especially in the lower country, which had but recently
been reclaimed from the sea. Even now, when cultivation is almost wholly
laid aside, a thick forest of luxuriant date-trees clothes the banks of
the Euphrates on either side, from the vicinity of Mugheir to its
embouchure at the head of the Persian Gulf. Anciently the tract was much
more generally wooded with them. “Palm-trees grow in numbers over the
whole of the flat country,” says one of the most observant and truthful
of travellers--Herodotus. According to the historians of Julian, a
forest of verdure extended from the upper edge of the alluvium, which he
crossed, to Mesene, and the shores of the sea. When the Arabian
conquerors settled themselves in the lower country, they were so charmed
with the luxuriant vegetation and the abundant date-groves, that they
compared the region with the country about Damascus and reckoned it among
their four earthly paradises. The propagation of the date-palm was
chiefly from seed. In Chaldaea, however, it was increased sometimes from
suckers or offshoots thrown up from the stem of the old tree; at other
times by a species of cutting, the entire head being struck off with
about three feet of stem, notched, and then planted in moist ground.
Several varieties of the tree were cultivated; but one was esteemed above
all the rest, both for the size and flavor of the fruit. It bore the
name of “Royal,” and grew only in one place near Babylon.
Beside these two precious products, Chaldaea produced excellent barley,
millet, sesame, vetches and fruits of all kinds. It was, however,
deficient in variety of trees, possessing scarcely any but the palm and
the cypress. Pomegranates, tamarisks, poplars, and acacias are even now
almost the only trees besides the two above mentioned, to be found
between Samarah and the Persian Gulf. The tamarisk grows chiefly as a
shrub along the rivers, but sometimes attains the dimensions of a tree,
as in the case of the “solitary tree” still growing upon the ruins of
Babylon. The pomegranates with their scarlet flowers, and the acacias
with their light and graceful foliage, ornament the banks of the streams,
generally intermingled with the far more frequent palm, while oranges,
apples, pears, and vines are successfully cultivated in the gardens and
orchards.
[Illustration: PLATE 5]
Among the vegetable products of Chaldaea must be noticed, as almost
peculiar to the region, its enormous reeds. [PLATE V.] These, which
are represented with much spirit in the sculptures of Sennacherib, cover
the marshes in the summer-time, rising often to the height of fourteen or
fifteen feet. The Arabs of the marsh region form their houses of this
material, binding the stems of the reeds together, and bending them into
arches, to make the skeleton of their buildings; while, to form the
walls, they stretch across from arch to arch mats made of the leaves.
From the same fragile substance they construct their _terradas_ or light
boats, which, when rendered waterproof by means of bitumen, will support
the weight of three or four men.
In mineral products Chaldaea was very deficient indeed. The alluvium is
wholly destitute of metals, and even of stone, which must be obtained, if
wanted, from the adjacent countries. The neighboring parts of Arabia
could furnish sandstone and the more distant basalt; which appears to
have been in fact transported occasionally to the Chaldaean Cities.
Probably, however, the chief importation of stone was by the rivers,
whose waters would readily convey it to almost any part of Chaldaea from
the regions above the alluvium. This we know to have been done in some
cases, but the evidence of the ruins makes it clear that such importation
was very limited. The Chaldaeans found, in default of stone, a very
tolerable material in their own country; which produced an inexhaustible
supply of excellent clay, easily moulded into bricks, and not even
requiring to be baked in order to fit it for the builder. Exposure to
the heat of the summer sun hardened the clay sufficiently for most
purposes, while a few hours in a kiln made it as firm and durable as
freestone, or even granite. Chaldaea, again, yielded various substances
suitable for mortar. Calcareous earths abound on the western side of the
Euphrates towards the Arabian frontier; while everywhere a tenacious
slime or mud is easily procurable, which, though imperfect as a cement,
can serve the purpose, and has the advantage of being always at hand.
Bitumen is also produced largely in some parts, particularly at Hit,
where are the inexhaustible springs which have made that spot famous in
all ages. Naphtha and bitumen are here given forth separately in equal
abundance; and these two substances, boiled together in certain
proportions, form a third kind of cement, superior to the slime or mud,
but inferior to lime-mortar. Petroleum, called by the Orientals _mumia_,
is another product of the bitumen-pits.
The wild animals indigenous in Babylonia appear to be chiefly the
following:--the lion, the leopard, the hyeena, the lynx, the wild-cat,
the wolf, the jackal, the wild-boar, the buffalo, the stag, the gazelle,
the jerboa, the fox, the hare, the badger, and the porcupine. The
Mesopotamian lion is a noble animal. Taller and larger than a Mount St.
Bernard dog, he wanders over the plains their undisputed lord, unless
when an European ventures to question his pre-eminence. The Arabs
tremble at his approach, and willingly surrender to him the choicest of
their flocks and herds. Unless urged by hunger, he seldom attacks man,
but contents himself with the destruction of buffaloes, camels, dogs, and
sheep. When taken young, he is easily tamed, and then manifests
considerable attachment to his master. In his wild state he haunts the
marshes and the banks of the various streams and canals, concealing
himself during the day, and at night wandering abroad in search of his
prey, to obtain which he will approach with boldness to the very skirts
of an Arab encampment. His roar is not deep or terrible, but like the
cry of a child in pain, or the first wail of the jackal after sunset,
only louder, clearer and more prolonged. Two varieties of the lion
appear to exist: the one is maneless, while the other has a long mane,
which is black and shaggy. The former is now the more common in the
country; but the latter, which is the fiercer of the two, is the one
ordinarily represented upon the sculptures. The lioness is nearly as
much feared as the lion; when her young are attacked, or when she has
lost them, she is perhaps even more terrible. Her roar is said to be
deeper and far more imposing than of the male.
[Illustration: PLATE 6]
The other animals require but few remarks. Gazelles are plentiful in the
more sandy regions; buffaloes abound in the marshes of the south, where
they are domesticated, and form the chief wealth of the inhabitants;
troops of jackals are common, while the hyaena and wolf are comparatively
rare; the wild-boar frequents the river banks and marshes, as depicted in
the Assyrian sculptures [PLATE VI., Fig. 1]; hares abound in the country
about Baghdad; porcupines and badgers are found in most places--leopards,
lynxes, wild-cats, and deer, are somewhat uncommon.
Chaldaea possesses a great variety of birds. Falcons, vultures, kites,
owls, hawks and crows of various kinds, francolins or black partridges,
pelicans, wild-geese, ducks, teal, cranes, herons, kingfishers, and
pigeons, are among the most common. The sand-grouse (Pterocles
arenarius) is occasionally found, as also are the eagle and the
bee-eater. Fish are abundant in the rivers and marshes, principally
barbel and carp, which latter grow to a great size in the Euphrates.
Barbel form an important element in the food of the Arabs inhabiting the
Affej marshes, who take them commonly by means of a fish-spear. In the
Shat-el-Arab, which is wholly within the influence of the tides, there
is a species of goby, which is amphibious. This fish lies in myriads on
the mud-banks left uncovered by the ebb of the tide, and moves with
great agility on the approach of birds. Nature seems to have made the
goby in one of her most freakish moods. It is equally at home in the
earth, the air, and the water; and at different times in the day may be
observed swimming in the stream, basking upon the surface of the tidal
banks, and burrowing deep in the mud.
The domestic animals are camels, horses, buffaloes, cows and oxen, goats,
sheep, and dogs. The most valuable of the last mentioned are grayhounds,
which are employed to course the gazelle and the hare. The camels,
horses, and buffaloes are of superior quality; but the cows and oxen seem
to be a very inferior breed. The goats and the sheep are small, and
yield a scanty supply of a somewhat coarse wool. Still their flocks and
herds constitute the chief wealth of the people, who have nearly forsaken
the agriculture which anciently gave Chaldaea its pre-eminence, and have
relapsed very generally into a nomadic or semi-nomadic condition. The
insecurity of property consequent upon bad government has in a great
measure caused this change, which render; the bounty of Nature useless,
and allows immense capabilities to run to waste. The present condition
of Babylonia gives a most imperfect idea of its former state, which must
be estimated not from modern statistics, but from the accounts of ancient
writers and the evidences which he country itself presents. From them we
conclude that this region was among the most productive upon the face of
the earth, spontaneously producing some of the best gifts of God to man,
and capable, under careful management, of being made one continuous
garden.